Arresting Moons
by LuvEwan
Summary: The war has taken a serious toll on Obi-Wan. His former Master offers solace. Slash. One post.


**Arresting Moons**

Written by LuvEwan

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.

A note: This is slash. Slash is a wonderful thing where two male characters, or two female characters, are romantically and/or physically entangled. In this case, it is two male characters. If that is a problem for you, don't read. If that isn't a problem for you……….it's fun, isn't it?

_The war has taken a serious toll on Obi-Wan Kenobi. His former Master offers solace. _

--

The day had been colored in blood. It dripped from the sky, down grimy and sweaty flesh, to seep through the dirt on the ground. When men screamed, blood rattled in their throats. When men died, it poured from their bodies, as though they were being purged of everything save their bones and skin. Blood threaded the eyes of survivors, who marched wearily from the slaughter, searching for a void to fall into.

Obi-Wan stood over the body, which was slowly cooling and sinking, like a last, great exhale had moved through it before it settled in oblivion. He heard himself breathing, heard the echoes of the man's breath catch as the saber had glided through him. Maybe, somewhere in the Force or in the darkening sky, the man was caught in his final memory, feeling the electric blade sever his muscles and free his guts again and again, staring blearily into the face of his killer, seeing the blue eyes of a Jedi who was supposed to be a General. Or was the reverse true?

A bird screeched, sharply enough to startle him from the reverie. A trooper was speaking to him in the counterfeit voice of a dead bounty hunter. It seemed strange to him, that legions of men wore the face of Jango Fett, when his head was toppled by a glowing violet sword months before. He led an army of ghosts, glinting white and dully thriving inside their suits and killing, commanded by a Jedi, another Jedi like the one who decapitated Fett in a seamless flash.

"General Kenobi?"

The soft scrape drew his eyes from their unfocused trance, and he saw the creased, dark skin, splattered in debris. How many had they murdered today, between them?

No, murder wasn't the word for it, was it? That was what his instructor had assured him, in another life on another world with the sun streaming through the window. Defense wasn't murder, she said, after all, you must protect yourself, young one.

But if he had not been here to begin with, he wouldn't have needed to…

"General Kenobi?"

There were whole generations of Jedi who never sacrificed Master for General, negotiation for combat, peace for war. What would they all think of him, looking down from their content place in the Force? Hells, what would his comrades think in the Temple now, when he came walking through, the edges of his robe frayed and ripped and tinged by other men's demise? He never believed in settling things this way, not even in defense, not even when the instructor smiled gently at him and said that sometimes the answers are painful, but they are answers just the same and must be carried through for the sake of those who cannot fight. So when they all looked at him and asked where his humanity had gone, he would respond with that answer, the one that could not be questioned, even when nights were choked by memories and food looked like heaps of ash. And ash used to be flesh before he appeared, wielding his saber for the Republic, for the gray-haired man who walked idly and smiled slowly and could bring entire planets rising in embrace of him, but would never dream of stepping onto this bloody hearth.

_How can you think of yourself? Your mind is not your own anymore._

Indeed, it had been replaced by the calculated psyche of a war man, General, sir, yes sir, as you say, sir, General Kenobi sir.

It was nearly dark, but it felt suddenly, unbearably hot. The scarlet stretched and enfolded him, because it was sunset and the sky's hues changed, or the blood was trying to claim him, the way he had claimed so many today—

Sir you don't look well, sir you should sit down, I can find a chair, just come with me, do you need a drink, you look—

Obi-Wan reflected that he really could have used a strong shot of liquor at that moment, any liquor, from anywhere, but then his head slammed on the ground, and he had his blackened mind to plummet into.

--

The teapot whistled in a high, insistent tone, steam shooting out and dispersing through the air.

Qui-Gon walked across the still room into the kitchen. He retrieved two mugs, which were hopelessly chipped and faded in comparison to the smooth, reflective steel of the cupboard he retrieved them from. More warm, gray air rose as the dark brew was emptied into the blunt containers, clamoring over the lower half of his face and beard.

It had been long months since he had reason to prepare tea for anything more than his own consumption. And he usually took it at dawn, when he needed the soothing touch down his throat to embark on the day. Now the evening was ripe, but sleep would be a mirage, not materializing for another score of hours, even days. He had promised Deshliegg, with all his earnestness, that he would not forego rest to look after the discharged patient. It was not an unusual thing for him to lie, though, in circumstances where honesty was not necessarily required.

He took a mug in each hand, returned to the room where he kept vigil, and set the fresh beverages on the table. Then he sat, but not on the chair he had spent hours in. Instead, he carefully lowered himself to the couch, leaning forward to touch a bruised temple.

Obi-Wan drew a hand against his chest and frowned, eyes screwed tightly shut in his pale, whiskered face.

Qui-Gon left his hand where it lay. He studied the figure of his old Padawan, mired in unsatisfying slumber, crumpled on the brown, beaten sofa, partially concealed by blankets and all but devoured by bandages. Some of the white strips were bound over his skin to staunch the blood of wounds from gristly Tukah, while others held patches of pain relievers and relaxants that slowly drained into his overwrought system.

Deshliegg and his small team warned that Obi-Wan's unconsciousness was likely to last a long while. In addition to the medicinal deluge traveling his bloodstream like water through a tunnel, his condition on arrival at the Temple was one of dehydration, extreme exhaustion, and a feeble sort of delirium. His collapse on the wilted Tukah battlefield had prompted his senior troopers to contact the Council, who after some deliberation arranged for Obi-Wan's return to Coruscant.

Qui-Gon's relationship with the Council was as substantial as the air pluming from the mugs, appearing in rare wisps that left as quickly as they formed. Nevertheless, he had been summoned to their tower, where only Mace and Yoda sat, regarding him solemnly from their soft seats. He was informed of his one-time student's concerning physical state, as well as the suspected damage to his mind. Apparently his transmissions to the Jedi had been off kilter, lacking his customary balance, for more than a week before the Tukah incident.

The edge of his fingers lightly grazed the limp hair, silvering and resembling rust.

They had shown him one of the last holographic images of Obi-Wan sent, in which Qui-Gon could immediately detect the decline in the younger man. The body was leaner, harder, the former softness of the flesh hammered into muscle. His tunics were bedraggled, in shocking contrast to the impeccable appearance he usually upheld in his Jedi uniform. The dismal composition of the grit and combat behind him could not rival the flat gray planes of Obi-Wan Kenobi's eyes, staring into the recorder as though it wasn't there, and he was looking through into a horizon of unending and hopeless chaos. The luminosity had been pierced through, and as Obi-Wan lay unaware of life still churning around him, there was no way of knowing if the remnants of that light remained somewhere.

Which was why Qui-Gon Jinn chose to ignore Deshliegg and his predictions and advisements. If Obi-Wan's soul had survived, if it was buried somewhere in the thick of shadows, it needed to be uncovered soon. Because Qui-Gon could not imagine what it would mean if Obi-Wan really were the coreless husk the holorecording presented, if he never smiled or laughed again, if he was another casualty of a war that should never have been…

"Obi-Wan," he whispered, very quietly but very deeply. Stroking his fingers along the straining brow, "Obi-Wan, you need to wake up."

Obi-Wan's face twisted, as if he had bitten into sour fruit, or was being asked to return from the only solace he knew.

Qui-Gon released a gentle breath. "Obi-Wan—"

And the slate eyes were on him, regarding him from their nests of bruised, red shadow, blinking. His mouth was a bleached line, trembling so slightly but barely allowing the word its freedom, "T…Tukah?"

Qui-Gon shook his hand, hand clamped firmly on one side of the face, "No," he said reassuringly, "You're on Courscant. In the Temple."

Obi-Wan gazed up at him with confusion that slowly loosened with comprehension. "I…fell." It sounded half like an inquiry, patched together from scattered scraps of the past, and he struggled against the couch, trying to sit upright.

Qui-Gon helped him, eyes never wavering from the perplexed face. "Yes, you did. The healers tell me it's a wonder you made it that long. You weren't sleeping or eating for days at a time, they said."

Obi-Wan's face dropped in his hand, and he wiped his eyes wearily. "I suppose I wasn't," he mumbled.

Qui-Gon looked at him, bowed there, already abandoning all attempts at a façade. It felt as though every bone in his chest had simultaneously impaled his heart. "Obi-Wan, why would you do that?"

The clouded eyes were trained on cracked, taped hands. "I wasn't hungry."

Qui-Gon swallowed the cold lump in his throat. "And you weren't tired?"

The eyes sealed. "I was…too tired, I think."

Qui-Gon nodded after a moment, taking the mugs from the table and handing one over to Obi-Wan, a small smile twisting the side of his mouth.

Obi-Wan looked down at it and a soft, exasperated sound escaped him. "You still have these?"

"Of course I do."

The mugs were practically relics, Qui-Gon had to admit. More than a decade before, during a mission to a world of dense forests, they were lost after deciding on what seemed to be a simple shortcut. Hours passed, and they only became further entrenched in the brush and twisting paths. At twilight, Qui-Gon had been preparing to call for assistance when they happened upon an older woman. She was sitting behind a stack of mealy wood that served as a shop front, running a rag over the tops of various ceramic items, humming quietly to herself.

-

A branch broke with their steps, and her pale blue eyes fastened on the pair. "From the looks of you two, you're not from around here."

Qui-Gon had approached the odd collection, Obi-Wan a pace behind. The creations ranged from small, perfectly leveled saucers to novelty animals and stout, round vases.

The woman smoothed a piece of white hair back from her face. "Nah, don't look at that stuff. I have something better than that. Something just right for you."

Obi-Wan shifted uncomfortably. "Actually, we're—"

"Very happy to take a look." Qui-Gon finished for him, standing patiently.

A smile spread across her mouth, the gums looking tender and the teeth so rotten they resembled the ragged, damp-edged wood. "Just you wait," she said with a harmonious little ring, disappearing behind the crude shop.

Clinks and clatters and a soft string of curses brought Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's eyes together, shining with repressed laughter.

"Ah! Here we go!" The woman declared, rising gracelessly from her crouch with two plain, nearly white mugs.

Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan stood, at a total pause.

Apparently her audience's reaction had not been what she was expecting. Her messy browns knit. "What, you don't know?"

Qui-Gon, ever composed, smiled and canted his head. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid we don't know."

She snorted, gaze moving between the two men, perhaps deciding whom she was more disgusted with. "There's a river here, a small one, with sacred waters. It only tastes sweet to those with sweet spirits. That's the only water I use when I make my things." She leaned forward, eyes and voice lowering in a way that was almost conspiratorial, "If you drink from those, and you have evil inside you, you'll have to spit it out. Even if you've had the drink a million times before, it will suddenly taste of bitterness and your mouth will feel afire."

Qui-Gon didn't have to probe the Force to know Obi-Wan's opinion of it all. He visualized the incredulous, disbelieving smirk in his mind.

"I only give these things to those who'll have use for them, you know. No use for them if you can't drink from them." She informed the Jedi, pushing the mugs to the edge of the plank. "Go ahead, take them."

-

Obi-Wan put his mug down. The tender sentiment of the memory had faded from his countenance. "I'm sorry for inconveniencing you," he glanced at Qui-Gon, then turned his eyes to the floor, "it wasn't my intention."

Qui-Gon frowned, moving a few inches closer, close enough to squeeze the slumped shoulder. "There's no reason to apologize, Obi-Wan." He touched the bearded chin, guiding it up, so that the other man was looking at him as he spoke, "I'm glad you're here. I'm glad the Council had enough sense to tell me of your condition."

The smile was a meager pulse, like the last star that manages to wink once before melting to vapor. The muddy gold bruises on Obi-Wan's face seemed to sharpen in the artificial light, making his skin too sickly, the dimness of his eyes more pronounced.

Qui-Gon harbored the intense hurt behind a wall, so he could help Obi-Wan, and not drown in his own pain for his friend. "The Council has suspended your title for now. They don't want to risk you returning and injuring yourself again."

Obi-Wan nodded, a long breath pulling out from him. He rubbed at his forehead, then suddenly walked out of the room, muttering that he needed a moment.

--

The room was a cubicle, everything square inside it, solid and neat and gleaming. Even the light had a shape, as it burned from the bulbs above his head, pressing down on his temples and squirming behind his eyes.

All of it felt too sharp. Obi-Wan closed his eyes, but the vibrations of the light traveled down his bones, bones that were hard and sharp but easily broken and ground into the scarlet flesh gut slush, the kind he made like everyone else there, with his loyal weapon that always went where he told it to, always sliced through living things even when they were staring, dumbstruck…

"Obi-Wan?"

He shook his head, pushing his eyes and his body down, covering his head so it couldn't touch his mind anymore…

Arms were around him. He tried to wrench out of them, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't see he didn't want to breathe or see or feel or be this General sir deaths only in the hundreds sir acceptable casualty rates sir quite successful sir even with the deaths and sir the best meat and bread has been saved for you

Every day forced itself from him, he felt them rushing out, but it wasn't vomit or tears just air, air like razors…

"Obi-Wan, let go. You must let go now, you're going to choke yourself…you can cry…it will be alright…"

No, it wouldn't be oh gods nothing was more wrong than that nothing was alright nothing was ever going to be…

--

"Alright." Qui-Gon sat the communicator aside, and balanced his head in his hands. The Council was removing Obi-Wan permanently from duty, a fact that both relieved and disturbed Qui-Gon. He would be safe from the ruthlessness of war, but it was already being carried inside him, in the eyes that stared from the bed like two stones.

He was not catatonic, or even immobile. Obi-Wan would sit with him at the table, eat whatever was put in front of him, swim in the pools.

But when night came, he lay awake, across from Qui-Gon, totally silent. Qui-Gon's humble quarters had only one bedchamber, and since he found Obi-Wan seized by frozen sobs on the floor of the lavatory, the couch in the living area had been empty. Some nights he decided not to disturb him; his attempts at conversation were met with a buzzing quiet.

Tonight the figure, darkly silhouetted by shadows, was visibly uneasy. He shifted constantly; eyes fasted to the same point on the ceiling, where silvers of whitish moon glow hovered through the hours.

Qui-Gon shed his brooding stance, and settled beneath the sheets. His body flattened with weariness against the mattress, wishing to disappear in it, rest deeply for one night without those thousands of compulsions to roll over and touch Obi-Wan's brow or arm or cheek. But his worry refused to forfeit, and before his eyes could shut he was turning toward Obi-Wan.

This time, Obi-Wan was already looking at him. "I can't drink out of it." He whispered. His face was pale, creased, calm.

Qui-Gon leaned his head on his palm. "Out of what?"

Obi-Wan gazed blearily at the ceiling, mouth compressed. "The mug."

A moment of utter silence passed, while the night's reflections quivered and flexed over them, twisting like lazy, illuminated snakes.

Then, "You're not evil, Obi-Wan."

"I've killed, more times than I can number."

"Not out of malice."

"Then out of what?" Obi-Wan wondered softly. His hands were folded over his bare stomach, creating a sort of tent for the puckered scar trailing from his navel to his left rib.

Qui-Gon rested his hand over them. "Why did you kill the Sith, on Naboo?"

Obi-Wan closed his eyes and turned his head away. "Because he was going to kill you."

"And why did you want me to live, rather than him?"

Obi-Wan shook his head. "It isn't the same thing. This…this was…"

Qui-Gon gripped the hands tightly. "What you were ordered to do. You didn't ask for this war, you didn't invent it. The Council gave you your place in it. You accepted it, because you have honor, you have dedication. I would be out there too, but after Uyuui, my leg isn't what it was." Uyuui, a few years before the Clone Wars exploded, four darts to his thigh, knee and calf. Stroking the damaged skin of Obi-Wan's midsection, "I would have been right there with you."

Obi-Wan sighed through his nose, watching the movements above him, the bristles on his chin and jaw turned silver at their edges by the twilight ambience. "I feel dead. I feel…like nothing exists in me anymore."

The eyes that met Qui-Gon's were the purest depictions of misery, detached but fully grasping the anguish, resigned yet despairing.

"I feel old…too old to still be living." Obi-Wan murmured. "Sometimes I think that I died on Naboo, and this isn't me, that I would never really do the things I've done, that somewhere I am still myself and—"

His mouth was covered by Qui-Gon's, his breath crushed by the force of it. It was the moment needed for the universe to stop, for the churning guilt to halt and the rawness was exposed inside him, the part beating, that was still giving him life, this life he didn't want or recognize.

Obi-Wan pressed his mouth against the warmth, tears sliding from his blurred eyes. The body beneath his fell pliant, and he found himself on the steady chest, and gripping the long, soft hair.

When they broke apart, the tears were in eyes of darker blue. "You _are_ alive, Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon rasped, "You are [i]alive[/i]. You are…more than anything to me. If there is any darkness, it isn't in you. It's in me, for thanking the Force you've been brought back to me, for wanting you to be with me when there are so many other places for you to be."

Obi-Wan's breath was being drawn in gasps, his deepest wounds finally bled out and now these words, these things being said to him that he had heard before, in his own banished thoughts. But he shook his head, face hot and trembling, "I…I'm wrong, I'm tainted…what I've done and seen…"

Qui-Gon captured that face in his hands, thumbs rubbing over the cheekbones, "You are a sweet spirit, Obi-Wan. Every…every path I take, I want it to be with you there. I've missed you."

"But…"

Qui-Gon sat up, enfolding the cold body, chest to chest, bracing the curved back with his hands.

And the protest died, arms reached up and gripped his shoulders, temples brushing and mouths connecting again, emblazoned on a road that wandered and spiked and ended where it began.

---


End file.
